Early on in the life of the National Assembly for Wales, which will be two years old this May, its chief legal officer, the Counsel General, Mr Winston Roddick QC, said it was like "a child without a parent".
What he meant was that its constitutional arrangements were unique, and unlike any to be found in other comparable assemblies or parliaments. The result was that the assembly's members have been the equivalent of orphans searching for a firm home base from where they could start building a fully fledged legislature.
First they had to get rid of their leader, Tony Blair's nominee, Alun Michael, who opposed early constitutional change. He fell in an opposition-led coup in February last year. Then they had to establish a government with a clear majority. This emerged only last October as a result of a coalition deal between Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
Rhodri Morgan, who had earlier lost out in a leadership contest with Alun Michael, became First Minister in the new coalition administration, with the Liberal Democrat leader, Mike German, as Deputy First Minister. However, these were only the most obvious outward signs of the new institution beginning to flex its muscles. While the political upheavals were taking place, a quieter but more fundamental constitutional change was under way in the Assembly's internal workings.
A constitutional obstacle the Assembly has had to grapple with is that it was set up as a corporate body. That is to say, its legislative and executive functions are combined. This has led to all manner of confusions, with technically the whole Assembly, both government and opposition, being responsible for executive decisions. During the first months most of the pressure on this structural weak point has been mobilised by the Assembly's Presiding Officer, Lord Elis-Thomas, the former Plaid Cymru MP for Meirionnydd, who was determined to drive the executive and legislature apart within the Assembly by establishing the independence of his office.
From the start he campaigned for his own autonomous officials and separate budget. And in the wake of the coalition deal this was achieved. Lord Elis-Thomas now has his own budget, worth some £24 million a year, and control of his 120 staff. None of this has been achieved without grief. However, the Assembly is now moving inexorably down the road to gaining more powers. What concrete results might there be? The coalition agreement between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, signed last autumn, contains more than 100 policy suggestions, with the following giving a flavour of what is in the offing:
Determination to follow the Irish example and persuade the British Treasury and the European Commission to allow a reduction in corporation tax and/or national insurance contributions for companies operating in the targeted regions.
A freeze on drug prescription charges - while in England they will rise - and free local bus travel for pensioners from 2002.
A pilot scheme for a specifically Welsh post-16 qualification to replace A-levels. These are an indication of the kind of policy divergences we can expect to see marking Wales out more clearly from England in the coming years. Meanwhile, the pace of constitutional change will be dictated by the results of the British general election and following that, the next Assembly elections in May 2003.
Plaid Cymru has modest ambitions for the general election, expecting to pick up only one or two seats, with Labour remaining the dominant party. But it is preparing to take over the Welsh government in Cardiff in 2003. This may not be an unrealistic ambition: opinion polls currently give Plaid Cymru around 30 per cent of the vote.
In the run-up to the general election Plaid is encouraging an internal party debate to define more clearly its constitutional objectives. As a first step it is aiming to achieve parity with the Scottish Parliament, with full legislative powers and some tax-varying powers. This, it says, will involve a reduction in the number of Welsh MPs at Westminster and a corresponding increase in Cardiff.
According to a recent Plaid policy statement, Towards Full National Status: Stages on the Journey, developments beyond this depend to a large extent on what happens elsewhere, in particular whether England begins to evolve regional government and what progress is made with European integration and enlargement.
The document paints two scenarios: a democratic, federal Europe of the Regions with a greatly empowered European Parliament and a written constitution; or, failing that, full national status for Wales as a member-state within a confederal European Union.
That such debates are now taken seriously reflects the distance the new National Assembly has travelled in 18 months. It began life as essentially an addition to the previous Welsh Office, with the administration continuing to act as an outpost of Whitehall and Assembly members operating in a kind of advisory capacity. Certainly, this was how Alun Michael saw matters.
That outlook rapidly became unsustainable, however, as the vote of no confidence in Michael showed. The injection of 60 elected politicians into the previous system of Welsh governance was no mere evolution in which business could carry on as though little of substance had altered. In practice it revolutionised the old territorial pattern of Whitehall-dominated administration in Wales.
As Lord Elis-Thomas put it: "The difficult and complex growth of parliamentary-type government in the National Assembly. . . has provided the main drama of the first year of powers." The future was to be the acquisition of a parliamentary process for Welsh democratic governance.
John Osmond is director of the Institute of Welsh Affairs, a policy think-tank based in Cardiff.